Rock, Paper, Shotgun has instructions distilled from a reddit post on how Steam users can finally select custom locations for their game installations. This is currently only available in the Steam beta and requires a little configuring, but the post includes instructions on how to opt in to the beta as well as on how to enable this new functionality. Thanks nin.

Dev: You're right, Steam is not as controlling as Ubisoft is in that they do not require a constant internet connection (and I don't have EA's Origin to compare that). But for the number of problems that Steam does have, it is extremely frustrating to deal with. Steam has an offline mode which has been good, although it has not always worked for me, but overall Steam has caused some really big frustrations! It is very stable though, no crashes that I can think of, just other annoyances.

I can't imagine the problems and frustration from games like Diablo III, Starcraft II or Settlers 7, and other "always-on" games, unbelievable that people put up with crap like that. I'm surprised people are not sueing. (But I guess in the EULA it says you may not sue the developers, haha). The amount of frustration that these "always-on" games produce, I do not experience it because I do not touch them, so I only know of Steam's problems. But Steam does frustrate me!

Steam is not as bad maybe (as those reasons above), but it has a huge number of it's own problems! I hate that version numbers are not shown for games on it, and I hate that they do not have simple options and choices as to where to install files to, and where to get them from! And I have had many times errors such as "The Steam servers are currently too busy to handle your request" when playing a single player game. This latter one is the worst!

I wonder if Steam has in fact reduced the amount of pirated games, because the crack groups release non-steam versions I think of many of the games. I wonder if honestly it does reduce piracy, maybe multi player more than single player.

Thank you to the person who agrees that Steam controls people. ANY limit being put on a person who uses Steam (or anything in life), is a form of control. DRM is control any way you look at it! You do not even own the games you buy on Steam, you own the right to play them. So if Valve goes out of business or the developer of the game does maybe, you may not be able to play the game you bought. You do not own it. That is control! Companies love control, and seem to try and get it with anything and everything they do!

Steam not allowing people to decide where to install software from (internet or DVD) is ridiculous and something that really needs to be fixed! They are not the government, but do you not see my point? It's not how "interesting" it would be to fix this "bug", and they may not solve a mathematical or physics problem or make lots of money from doing it, but they need to properly maintain their software. It does not matter in any way how they run the company inside, this is next to a bug, and they should be fixing it!! They don't find it interesting to make Steam's users be able to install games the way we want to? They don't care enough about what people think of Steam then, it's not interesting to them? What is interesting?

I guess the idea of all people being able to work on their own interests is not perfect, because it leads to these sorts of problems, where simple features do not get coded in for years! This is really simple stuff (installing games to a 2nd hard drive, or user options to choose install source). Imagine your BIOS deciding how to boot your computer, and if the device it chooses to boot from isn't what you want, then you have to hit the reset button until it picks the one you do want! That is the way it appears Steam chooses to install files, haha.

Compare what PC gaming was like in the 90s and early 2000s, and see how much more freedom people had with their games back then.

Steam does not sell movies or music, but again the point is that DRM whether games, movies, music is a form of control no matter how you see it. You buy a song/album from iTunes, and you can only use it on Apple devices, and have maybe one copy of it available to play and one for backup (something like that).

Control! Control! Control! Steam controls, and it's really frustrating that 15/20 games I have not been able to install on the first attempt, but have to (sometimes uninstall what was installed), then restart the install from the beginning!

You don't think Valve are interested in control and dominating? Look at what is happening with Windows 8 and Valve writing their games and Steam for Linux because they are worried about losing market share or business to Microsoft.

One good example of Steam controlling, is that when you buy a retail DVD PC game, before it's "activation date", Steam tells you that you can not play the game yet, haha! Or that you can not uninstall a game from your computer without being online and connected to Steam.

But this is where digital life is going, DRM and control. An attempt to stop piracy!

durandal wrote on Sep 13, 2012, 04:31:Indeed. People use to appreciate Steam here in Japan, but now so many games are restricted/overpriced no one really bother to buy their games on Steam (except for sales obviously.).

What bothers me more is it's inconsistency. Some games are restricted but some are not, despite them being published by the same company. A game is not available, but its DLC is being sold like it's normal. Some are taken out just before the release date, come back 2 years later, and then disappear again.

They are controlling alright, but also don't seem to be very good at it.

That sounds more like a publisher issue. Why would steam limit it's sales?

Indeed. People use to appreciate Steam here in Japan, but now so many games are restricted/overpriced no one really bother to buy their games on Steam (except for sales obviously.).

What bothers me more is it's inconsistency. Some games are restricted but some are not, despite them being published by the same company. A game is not available, but its DLC is being sold like it's normal. Some are taken out just before the release date, come back 2 years later, and then disappear again.

They are controlling alright, but also don't seem to be very good at it.

Matshock wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 14:49:What was funny was buying that last D&D action game on disc then finding that all it did was connect to Steam and start a dowload. The disc itself had no installation files on it!

What is not as funny, that same D&D game came out with a patch. Only steam got it and it was a major critical patch. To this day you can still buy it elsewhere and even on Atari's website and you cannot patch it up. This game was abandoned. Couldn't even take the 1/2 day to allow other places of purchase to patch. The game sucked anyway.

Dev wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 17:15:3) Steam controls like crazy? WTF? They are some of the least controlling out there.

I'm speechless... this must be a case of someone being controlled so hard that they have lost all sense of being controlled... or something like that.

Seriously, I have come to appreciate Steam over the years but contrary to some propaganda victims like yourself I'm not blind to the fact that Gabe & co are all about controlling a major share of the digitally distributed gaming content on the PC platform (= what you'd usually expect from the platform leader or OS maker a.k.a MS but MS is apparently too busy with their Xbox control freakage to bother just even generally farting in Valve's direction).

Also, speaking in principle, every restriction of Steam (and there are shitloads when you think about it) is in effect an exercise of control.

Steam in and by itself and in its function as a digital distribution tool of publishers does indeed control like crazy. I find it outright scary that some people don't even realize that anymore. It reinforces suspicion that too much gaming might not be good for one's IQ. Seriously. Open your eyes, people. And use your brain for more than just thinking about whether $9.99 is a good deal for Crysis or not. Jeez...

Propaganda victim? Do you bother to read anything I post? I'm one of the most vocal critics of valve and steam. Even in this very thread I criticized them.Here's something I said in this thread:"Gabe and his obsession (his word not mine) with employee health has led them to this flat no management structure where all desks have wheels and they mostly only work on things interesting to them."Does that really sound like I'm a blind fanboi of gabe and valve? That kinda company structure is awesome for working there. Not so much for customers.

As a gamer, heres what I'm mostly concerned with. Can I play the games I paid for whenever the frack I want, on whatever computers I want. If I lose the disk can I still play the game? If my computer gets wiped, can I install and play the game? If I change a video card can I still play a game? On many DRM schemes, the above answers are no.

When I want to play a game, I run steam and the game runs. When I want to play a game on my laptop, I run steam and the game runs. If I want to play a game at a friends house, I run steam and the game runs. If the game needs to be installed, it installs. If I make a backup of a game so I don't have to download, it uses the backup. If I can't connect to the internet, I can still play single player games, which is to be expected. It would be kinda hard to play multiplayer games online without actually being online. Steam fixed some bugs with offline recently, and yes the offline mode works. You don't have to be online first to go offline.

Now compare that to my experience with GfWL in the past. When I've installed it, it crashes, not just the game, but bluescreens in some cases. When I've tried to update it, it freezes the game (even if I leave it on an entire day). I've had to reboot multiple times to get GfWL updated before. And that doesn't count countless rebooting from uninstalling and reinstalling and trying to fix things. Things like MS deciding to start hiding a program that needs to be updated from the uninstall list, so you have to go install and uninstall other programs, like live messenger, and hope that updates the component in question. Incidentally, I'm still curious as to why windows update is a hidden process that accounts for a computer being at 100% CPU load but when you open the task manager, nothing it over 5%. I've had to spend probably 50 hours on fixing problems with GfWL preventing me from playing my games when I want to play them on various computers. I've had problems on every OS I've used with GfWL, from win XP to win 7. Everytime a new game with GfWL comes out, I have more problems. I think this last time is the only time I haven't had to fix problems (when I bought dead rising 2 off the record), and thats only because I already had GfWL updated from the another game I had that used it, I think one of the warhammer ones. Can you tell I hate GFWL?

Then there's the always on DRM like ubisoft. Installing rootkits and secret web browser controls. Making it so when I want to play settlers 7, it will only let if me their servers are up. They STILL had problems with authentication last time I played settlers years after it came out, problems that prevented me from playing the game I bought.

Thats what I compare steam to. That level of control. Its mostly transparent to the average gamer (unless publishers force 3rd party DRM layers on top). Thats what I want. I want DRM that doesn't bother legitimate customers (most forms of DRM, thats all they do, they don't stop anything but the most casual of piracy, unless they are draconian always online ones, and even those don't stop it all).

BTW, one thing steam can be very effective at, is stopping piracy before the release date. Namely because of games that use the steam platform properly to unlock the game and download the last exe file etc after a release date. And if a platform can stop that kinda piracy, thats about as good as you can hope for for most protection.

Dev wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 17:15:3) Steam controls like crazy? WTF? They are some of the least controlling out there.

I'm speechless... this must be a case of someone being controlled so hard that they have lost all sense of being controlled... or something like that.

Seriously, I have come to appreciate Steam over the years but contrary to some propaganda victims like yourself I'm not blind to the fact that Gabe & co are all about controlling a major share of the digitally distributed gaming content on the PC platform (= what you'd usually expect from the platform leader or OS maker a.k.a MS but MS is apparently too busy with their Xbox control freakage to bother just even generally farting in Valve's direction).

Also, speaking in principle, every restriction of Steam (and there are shitloads when you think about it) is in effect an exercise of control.

Steam in and by itself and in its function as a digital distribution tool of publishers does indeed control like crazy. I find it outright scary that some people don't even realize that anymore. It reinforces suspicion that too much gaming might not be good for one's IQ. Seriously. Open your eyes, people. And use your brain for more than just thinking about whether $9.99 is a good deal for Crysis or not. Jeez...

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 13:48:I have Steam on a dedicated 3TB drive and even though I keep all my games installed I still have plenty of space left over (my Steam folder is 1.47GB). And with Storage Spaces in Windows 8 you can create a non-redundant or redundant array consisting of several drives with minimal effort, so I've never been too concerned about such a limitation.

However, this feature should have been included from the beginning. I can imagine some people wanting to keep their most played games on a SSD which are notoriously limited in capacity (or using smaller drives if they're on a budget) and I find it bizarre that Valve took this long to implement it. It's hard to applaud Valve for such a basic feature but it's better late than never.

Your Steam folder is only 1.47GB, do you only have one game or something?

I still use my trusty method of a small partition/drive for C: that is just for Windows and system related programs and a large D: drive/partition for games and storage. I currently have a 1.5TB WD Black with 50GB partitioned as C: and the rest D:.

It's come in handy in the past when Windows nuked itself. I don't keep anything important on C: so I can format it and re-install without worry. Although it's been about 10 years since I've had to do that it probably doesn't matter anymore. There is one advantage to a small C: partition with Win7, using the system backup to create an image of the system partition. It's much faster to make an image of a 50GB partition than a 1.5TB one, even though I don't do image backups.

Thats EA you are confusing valve with. Valve doesn't care too much about that. The reason why its taken so long to get some features and they are super slow about others, is that its just not very interesting for the valve employees to program that stuff in the UI.

Not very interesting? Haha, it's not supposed to be "interesting". They can not be bothered doing it?! Haha, part of their job! What if the government couldn't be bothered building uninteresting road features like signs![...]Probably incredibly simple to program in too! 10 lines of code maybe.[...]Steam controls people and software like crazy!! That is what DRM does! It puts limits on how and what people can do with the software or music, movies, etc... (controlling by definition). [...]It is much more interesting to try and dominate/control PC gaming and make as much money as possible than it is to provide simple functions for people in the software.

1) valve isn't a government. They are a private business. Gabe and his obsession (his word not mine) with employee health has led them to this flat no management structure where all desks have wheels and they mostly only work on things interesting to them.

2) I doubt it was that simple. They waited until a new file system method, probably because of the way steam looks for installed programs (which is silly, because they could have made a pointer file, but whatever). HOWEVER, there's a better example of simple. How it took them years to copy the search code from library to friends list. THAT was probably only 10 lines of changed code, and would probably only take a few minutes to copy the existing search code, implement and test. Prior to that, if you had a big friends list you had to scroll through hundreds of people and look in playing games section, then online section, then offline section, and holy crap if someone changed their name and or avatar.Steam is still missing a feature to add notes to friends, so you can mention something like WTF you know that person from.

3) Steam controls like crazy? WTF? They are some of the least controlling out there. The only less controlling/drm than steam is things like GoG with no controls or limits at all. Its not valve's fault if a publisher forces 3rd party DRM onto a steam game with install limits. Also, steam doesn't have movies. I think you are confusing valve again, with some crazy controlling company.

4) Not for valve. You are again thinking of a public company beholden to shareholders like EA. Valve is a private company. They are not much interested in controlling and dominating PC market.

With all the new UI stuff, I wonder if valve finally got around to hiring a UI employee or two who actually DO find this stuff interesting to work on.

Thats EA you are confusing valve with. Valve doesn't care too much about that. The reason why its taken so long to get some features and they are super slow about others, is that its just not very interesting for the valve employees to program that stuff in the UI.

EA actually had a good chance to invest a tiny amount of money and come up with a far superior client. They didn't even bother.

Not very interesting? Haha, it's not supposed to be "interesting". They can not be bothered doing it?! Haha, part of their job! What if the government couldn't be bothered building uninteresting road features like signs! It's supposed to be functional and be helpful to users. It causes annoyances each time I install a game. It is something that should be fixed, it is basically a bug! They are deciding how you install the software, where you get it from! Remember "Plug and pray" instead of "Plug and Play", haha. Probably incredibly simple to program in too! 10 lines of code maybe.

How can you say they do not control how people install, organise, buy, patch, discuss games?!?! Steam controls people and software like crazy!! That is what DRM does! It puts limits on how and what people can do with the software or music, movies, etc... (controlling by definition). At least Steam does not require a constant internet connection!

It is much more interesting to try and dominate/control PC gaming and make as much money as possible than it is to provide simple functions for people in the software. This is a pretty standard feature I think (as is a feature to install files to a separate drive, good god, haha), pretty easy to program in, and would solve a lot of frustrations!

It would be like Paypal deciding for you whether you will pay with your bank account instead of Credit card, and when your bank account fails to pay, it then tries your Credit card, haha. But no option to you to choose. (It would be funny if they made it random, so that Steam sometimes downloads files from the web and other times from DVD. Haha. About as useful as it is now.)

Matshock wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 14:49:What was funny was buying that last D&D action game on disc then finding that all it did was connect to Steam and start a dowload. The disc itself had no installation files on it!

Now that's plain lazy of them. I bought Civ5 at retail (it used steam too) and it had the install files on disc, must be developer specific. I have a monthly cap so that'd piss me off if it happened.

Agreed... The only reason I would buy a physical product now is to have it on hand for easy (re-)installs... But at least you get a physical box with a CD Key in it : ) Maybe a manual too? Or are they going purely digital now?

Matshock wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 14:49:What was funny was buying that last D&D action game on disc then finding that all it did was connect to Steam and start a dowload. The disc itself had no installation files on it!

Now that's plain lazy of them. I bought Civ5 at retail (it used steam too) and it had the install files on disc, must be developer specific. I have a monthly cap so that'd piss me off if it happened.

Thats EA you are confusing valve with. Valve doesn't care too much about that. The reason why its taken so long to get some features and they are super slow about others, is that its just not very interesting for the valve employees to program that stuff in the UI.

EA actually had a good chance to invest a tiny amount of money and come up with a far superior client. They didn't even bother.

Ray Marden wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 12:13:It is about time - with super cheap mechanical drives and the rise of (much smaller) SSDs, we can finally - finally - direct the location of installations.

Well, you've always been able to direct it... by using windows junctions/symbolic links. I've been doing that for years, in large part because I do have an SSD. I believe steam mover uses that too.Its just not integrated into the steam client.

Matshock wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 14:49:What was funny was buying that last D&D action game on disc then finding that all it did was connect to Steam and start a dowload. The disc itself had no installation files on it!

Yet another reason not to bother with retail

Beamer wrote on Sep 12, 2012, 13:56:I need to buy a new HDD. 2TB should finally be falling in price again, right?Ug.

I saw a 3tb external at costco for $110 or so (easy enough just to remove the drive if external isn't needed). So yeah they are slowly getting there.